Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING’ was what I remembered from the trashy thrillers I read in my youth, so I only threw a couple of books into the blood and used them as stepping stones while I searched Prof. Weiss’s pockets. The contents of his wallet were of no interest: reader’s cards to some obscure, scholarly libraries, the photograph of an aunt-like person and enough money to buy luncheon at a Greek restaurant. One of his keys opened a steel filing cabinet, which looked more promising. I found his daybook in the top drawer; it contained an entry which read: ‘C. Mortdecai called; insolent pup; prying into B.F.’s death; shewed me regrettable manuscript of hers. People should leave such things alone.’

Like many a practised coward, whenever I find that I have lifted something too heavy – or too hot – I tend to squeal for help. I’m that sort of a chap. On this occasion I resorted to Jesus.

Jesus College is one of those frightful places in Turl Street, Oxford (England) and is a sort of enclave of the Principality of Wales – indeed, it is said that if you stand in the Quadrangle of Jesus and bellow ‘MR JONES!’ fifty grimy windows will open and fifty melodious voices will reply, ‘Yes, boyo?’

I did not bellow, for my friend there is a Fellow of that College. (He was once a Balliol man but has fallen upon evil times, you understand.) In any case, his name is not Jones but something else which I cannot spell. He was in his rooms. I said that I needed to use his telephone importantly and he twigged in a second, being Welsh, you see – devious, devious. He made a tactful exit, saying only that he hoped I would join him for a beer in the Common Room when I had finished. I shuddered, for the beer in Jesus College (Oxford) is very nearly as foul as in Jesus College (Cambridge). Never trust a race which has not invented a national drink of its own, take my word for it. (I refer to the Welsh, of course, but you may apply it to Cambridge men if you care to.)

The American Embassy was still at 24 Grosvenor Square (although the Arabs probably own the freehold now) and the telephone number was still as I remembered it and one was still clicked and tinkled through the PXs from one furry-voiced secretary to another until one was privileged to speak to the highest-paid, most wild-mink-voiced one of all. I remembered her from a few years back; well, at least I remembered her fantastic tits, the ultimate status symbol for secretary owners. She remembered me all right, too, but I wasn’t going to get any mileage out of that, for she was one of those rare people who do not like me. She made me spell my name three times, then looked me straight in the eye – yes, down the telephone – and assured me that there was no such person as Colonel Blucher and yes, she was his Confidential PA but she had never heard of him and gosh she was sorry but there was a call coming through on the hotline from Afghanistan and goodbyeeee. I said something to her which no gentleman should have known how to pronounce. She said, ‘You’re very welcome,’ and we both put our instruments down. Telephones, you understand.

I did not seethe, nor did I fume, for my highly-qualified physician has promised me that seething and fuming are almost as harmful as cigarettes. I rummaged my Welsh friend’s set of rooms for something to appease my screaming stomach but there was nothing, nothing; not even a leek. Even I could not bring myself to make a bad joke about that.

Furiously, I span the telephone dial and after only three mistakes I was connected to my wife in Jersey, if you see what I mean. She seemed to think, at first, that I was the taxi-driver, for she was about to travel to the airport, where she intended to climb aboard an aircraft.

‘Yes, dear?’ she said when I had established my identity. I held the telephone a little further from my ear because icicles were stabbing out of it.

‘Listen, Johanna,’ I snarled.

‘I am doing so, dear; and, so I guess, are most of the servants. You are interfering with their television. But do go on.’

‘Johanna dearest, light of my life, apple of my eye, my first and only love,’ I said in carefully-modulated tones, trying not to grate my teeth too loudly, ‘it is important to me to get in touch with your brother – you know, Colonel Blucher? My brother-in-law? – immediately. His secretary-bird has never heard of him.’

‘I know, Charlie dear. She just called me. What she said was, you should just follow the old procedure that you and he used way back when for, uh, when you got kind of scared – you know?’

‘I know,’ I grated. ‘And thanks. Have a nice day.’ We hung up almost simultaneously: she was a little faster than the Embassy secretary. A matter of bust-measurements, I suppose – not so far to reach, you see.

Perhaps I should explain at this point that why I so freely splashed words about like ‘brother’ and ‘brother-in-law’ was because Colonel Blucher was – indeed, probably still is – Johanna’s brother and she is my wife and has papers to prove it, so he is, quite clearly, my brother-in-law, wouldn’t you say?

I made a great effort of will and ceased the tooth-grating (for I am no longer a young man) and summoned up the old ‘procedure’ from some nasty mental cubby-hole. I dialled the number, let it ring the prescribed twelve times, hung up and dialled again. A prescribed, twelve-times rung, hung-up and dialled voice said that yes it was the Home & Colonial Stores – what hateful memories this boy-scout-spy nonsense conjured up – and I said that I was Willie and wanted to speak to Daddy because Mom was poorly. I added the word ‘ ugh ’ although it was not part of the ‘procedure.’ Blucher kept me waiting just long enough to make me feel unwanted but not long enough to allow any hostile wire-tappers or buggers to trace the call. He made affable noises. I tried not to snarl.

‘Look,’ I said levelly.

‘I’m looking, Willie. In fact I can see you clearly.’

‘Oh Christ, Franz, if there’s one thing more tiresome than a humourless man, it’s a humourless man who feels obliged to make funnies. Don’t, I beg you. Just listen. A certain lady has recently been treated with what your awful American clandestine people would call “extreme prejudice.” Got it?’

He made gotting-it noises of the non-committal sort. I continued. ‘She made some cryptic sort of notes before, ah, leaving. Got it? Yes, well, people are now creeping up behind me and hitting me cruelly upon what I still like to think of as my head.’

He made standard textbook noises of the sympathetic sort.

‘The notes were about a lot of people who were massacred some years ago in a country famous for its chamber-pots – oh dear, sharpen your wits, do: in England the chamber-pot is known to its friends as a “po.” PO – got it?’

He made baffled noises in his brain – I could hear them – then he got it. ‘Yeah, got it. So what else is new?’

‘What else is new is disturbing: it seems that my certain lady stumbled across some information which says that the dreadful people who were supposed to have done the massacre didn’t; and that it was a different lot. A very different lot indeed.’

‘Look, Willie, maybe you know what you’re talking about but it’s Greek to me.’

I cringed. ‘No no no , not Greek at all, far from it, rotten shot. It’s more, um, Coptic Ethiopian.’ (A stroke of inspiration there, for one of the few people I truly hate is the Fellow and Tutor in Coptic Ethiopian. If the line was being bugged by baddies, there was a good chance that the said baddies would give the said Fellow a bad time.)